Terra in Cognita

When a divine spiritual illumination becomes manifest in the world of humanity, when divine instruction and guidance appear, then enlightenment follows, a new spirit is realized within, a new power descends, and a new life is given.

 (‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 305)  

The book explores the implications of the above statement from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.  Part One investigates how divine Revelation determines human knowledge.  That is, not how divine Revelation is one among many important influences making human knowledge possible and giving it form and substance and verification, but, in fact, that Revelation is the one indispensable influence, as the sun is the one indispensable influence for life on earth, other influences supporting or neutralizing the effects of the sun’s light, but all born from it.  Further, if Revelation is progressive, as the Bahá'í Writings state, then knowledge itself is in a state of emergent evolution.

We must realize that those who understand the world’s imperatives for change will be called upon very soon to be a refuge to whole populations of mental and emotional refugees fleeing the ravages of other states of mind and heart.  In the introduction to the document, One Common Faith, The Universal House of Justice sets the task for Bahá'ís:  “If they are to respond to the need, Bahá'ís must draw on a deep understanding of the process by which humanity’s spiritual life evolves.” (One Common Faith: p. iii)  That process, for me, always begins with the revealing of the Word.  Materialistic thought opposes that in principle.

Materialism is a terrible spiritual pathology which has infected all humanity to some degree.  All living today were born into the most materialistic world that humanity has ever built, and Americans have been raised in the most materialistic society of that world, the very vortex of materialism.  In our ignorance and because those around us think the same way, unconsciously most of us in the “developed” countries accept this inherited belief as a true picture of reality. If left unchallenged or unexamined, and so long as food is on the table and roof is over one’s head, it seems to work adequately enough.  But if comfort is threatened, the most violent reactions from the center of the human psyche are likely to be brought forth.   Many are religious.  But I am not talking about established religion, which is so often but one more pill in our pharmacology of mental slumber aids.  In fact, if we want to know how a pathology like materialism took hold of the mind and heart of humanity, we must look to the decline and perversion of religion itself as the answer and first cause, at least that is where I believe Bahá’u’lláh directs our gaze.

These few essays do not intend any more than a tentative search along a few chosen paths of investigation.  But, to be clear, I am not trying to cut my way through a great, tangled wilderness of dimly lit spiritual intuitions to cultivate the ground and bring it, finally, into bright rational civil order.  Rather, I am trying to accustom my vision to a brilliantly lit order of vast and intricate complexity that is the revealed Word, the City of God.  It is not the “landscape” that needs illumination, but the wanderer in it.

The first three essays composing Part One were originally presentations at the annual Desert Rose Artists and Scholars Symposium.  They have each endured an expansion of their material, as befits a less constrained written presentation, adding what I hope is more depth and clarity to their discussions.  But I have made no attempt to synthesize these essays into a single narrative. While some repetition remains of themes and topics, this is a natural consequence of overlapping contexts where a theme that is briefly alluded to in one essay may be dealt with in more detail in another, because it is more central in that other context.

The long final essay, The Revolt Against Materialism, which is all of Part Two, was written for this book. It is a first extended, but far from completed, examination of a topic that I call “sociology of the spirit”, the replacing of the human order by a divine one

The essays do not couple like railway cars, but, rather, their topics and themes interpenetrate and  interrelate because they start from and are manifestations of the same Origin: the field that surrounds and penetrates all things, so that all things become its different manifestations: a unity manifest in diversity. To grasp processes of manifestation in motion, the questions to answer are: How do spiritual forces manifest in organic forms?  And: How do organic forms grow? 

This is also to identify a different causality, a causality of simultaneity, that I call “spiritual causality”.  In this view, the process of transformation is understood as seeing how entities and patterns in the eternal spiritual dimension, where things exist, get translated into temporal forms, whose equivalent structural principles are processes that persist.  In such a study of transformation, on the divine, spiritual side words such as manifestation, crystallization, and materialization are useful, while on the organic, human side a vocabulary of words such as emergence, development and unfoldment come to prominence.  All guided transformation is traced through a lexicon of operative metaphors and nouns: template, Plan, pattern and nucleus, and powers and attributes “emerging” from Essence that build into progressive manifestation called development. 

An example of what I mean by spiritual causality is a statement made by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.  Upon laying the cornerstone of the first Bahá’i House of Worship in the West, He remarked: “The Temple is already built”, though not a single brick had been laid.  Of the great transformation of spiritual pattern into organic form, Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “Soon will the present-day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead. Verily, thy Lord speaketh the truth, and is the Knower of things unseen.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 6) 

Translating what is Written into Action

Through the nurturing and unfolding of man's transcendental potential, cultural diversity can begin to be viewed as the expression of this universal and basic truth….In this regard, education is of paramount importance.

(Bahá’í International Community, 1990 Jan 26, Combating Racism)

        

‘Abdu’l-Bahá stated that “through divine education the masses of mankind generally will take great steps forward in all degrees of life”. (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: 191)  Beyond developments in the institutional structure of the Administrative Order, and those special projects and social initiatives noted before, there is today a global spiritual education effort the Bahá’í community is undertaking, an initiative that in the last few decades has created the first approach in education through which great numbers of individuals may be engaged in that “divine education” which will cure the disease of materialism that is corrupting humanity’s spiritual life.

The spiritual origins of this endeavor are found in such statements as these two from Bahá’u’lláh: “From the heaven of God's Will, and for the purpose of ennobling the world of being and of elevating the minds and souls of men, hath been sent down that which is the most effective instrument for the education of the whole human race.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh: 94)  And: “Bend your minds and wills to the education of the peoples and kindreds of the earth, that haply the dissensions that divide it may, through the power of the Most Great Name, be blotted out from its face, and all mankind become the upholders of one Order, and the inhabitants of one City." (Gleanings: 333-334)   

Learning is central to the unfoldment of the divine Plan for humankind.  I mean that, while I have used a phrase “spiritual template” and said that this coded intelligent energy for building human thought and society anew is taking organic form as the divine order revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, we should be careful not to assume that the path of growth is clearly marked out and strictly and solely determined by God. Spiritual templates which become unfolding patterns of growth do not simply descend fully intact like a cookie cutter slicing into a lump of dough called humanity.  Neither is the new order like a machine merely to be assembled from a detailed blueprint.

Though the divine teachings impel humankind toward a world civilization, human beings evolve by learning, and though to achieve the intended evolutionary goal of the world civilization is human destiny, humanity has free will to partially decide and creative power to determine to some extent the shape of its destiny.  Learning is the discovery of spiritual context, and to use what one has learned of these spiritual principles to build a surrounding social context called culture and civilization that will reinforce the inner change.  This is not a paint by number exercise.

The House of Justice summarized of the steps of individual and social transformation as: “Souls must be transformed, communities thereby consolidated, new models of life thus attained.” (The Universal House of Justice, A Wider Horizon, Selected Letters 1983-1992: 64-65)  The actual path to be followed, then, must, to some degree, be the result of human trial-and-error experimentation in new patterns of social life.  Shoghi Effendi wrote to a young believer, for example: “The Bahá'í community life provides you with an indispensable laboratory, where you can translate into living and constructive action the principles which you imbibe from the Teachings.” (The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 424)  Bahá’u’lláh, Himself, admonished humanity: “It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action.” (Gleaning: 249)   To transfer thought from one language to another is rarely via an exact word-for-word translation, but, rather, the finding of equivalent pattern and meaning between contexts.  But neither can understanding of humanity’s spiritual evolution leave out divine Will and Purpose, as the materialist paradigm believes. 

         I don’t believe that Divine Will and human action are mutually exclusive.  Creative trial and error experimentation to attain new models of life can be guided and regulated by a higher power if it goes on within an unfolding framework of organic possibility toward a commonly accepted goal. This world can mirror, within the limitations imposed upon it, the glories of that heavenly realm, if that world acts as a template of general directions guiding how to rebuild itself in the world below.  But the template of that new global order must be perceptible so that humanity can transition step by step into a unified global order.  As we know, Bahá’ís believe that their Administrative Order is the unfolding pattern and nucleus of that world Order. 

However exhilarating this prospect may seem to some, Alfred North Whitehead soberly warned: “It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” (Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect: 88  

Revelation shapes human mental and social reality.  While the laws governing the spiritual and physical levels of reality are either fixed or beyond our control, social and mental reality is not. If, as the Master stated, “The reality of man is his thought”, then we have the capacity to change our social reality by changing our thought.  Social reality, then, is a result, in part, of human agreements about objective reality. This does not leave out the objective natural and divine worlds, but rather incorporates them, as they do the human one, as we learn about them.  We shape the natural environment by turning weeds into flowers, grasses into grains, jungles into gardens, to make nature part of the human social reality.  From the other and higher side, to incorporate spiritual law into human society is to agree to make it a regulative part of human social reality.  When agreements alter, social reality changes and this, in turn, changes acquired human nature.  The materialist order leans toward the objective natural world for its assumptions, principles and paradigms, so a “natural” person emerges.  When human will aligns with the Divine Will a spiritualized social reality can be created, because a spiritual nature emerges and is brought forth.  The starting point of change for each is different.

Paul Lample explains: “Rather than merely attempting to reform the social order from the outer layers of custom and common practice, the Word of God provides statements of truth that, once accepted by individuals, overturn old conceptions and form new agreements at the deepest layers of fundamental belief.  Unity of thought on principle greatly reinforces the movement toward changes in behavior, social relations, and institutional arrangements.  If, for example, we agree that humanity is one, then we must work out the far-reaching patterns of life and institutional arrangements that will manifest it.” (Revelation and Social Reality: 19)

Perhaps, in the current context of social transformation, the instrument specifically intended in Bahá’u’lláh’s statement above is what Bahá’ís’ call “the institute process”.  This is a pedagogy of learning for people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities, consisting of group study of the Word of God, discussion of its meaning, expressing one’s learning in specific social practices that develop personal spiritual and social capacities and that further refine and elaborate the learned meaning, then personal and group reflection upon the whole process, and, finally, determining how to proceed from there along agreed upon lines of action. In this way, an organic cycle or spiral of learning and action is created and carried out in ever more complex and elaborate ways to spiritually influence and morally uplift the larger human society. In my opinion, of all the attempts to conceptualize and implement this pedagogy, the best conceived, the most developed and far-reaching, and the most effective is the Ruhi Institute, born and tested originally in Colombia, but since carried to every part of the world.  

Practical Justice

Justice is not limited, it is a universal quality. Its operation must be carried out in all classes, from the highest to the lowest. Justice must be sacred, and the rights of all the people must be considered.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks: 159)

     As power is redefined in the Bahá’í Writings as empowerment, so, too, is justice redefined as that which ensures the empowerment of all.  In regards to the concept of the oneness and wholeness of human relationships some aspects have been described, such as the relations between the individual and institutions that share spiritual principles and collective goals, and the balance between individual creativity and cohesive community.  In the heat and ferment of unrest, The Prosperity of Humankind reminds us that an “age that sees the people of the world increasingly gaining access to information of every kind and to a diversity of ideas will find justice asserting itself as the ruling principle of successful social organization."  (The Prosperity of Humankind: Section II para: 1)  

In my opinion, at its fundamental core, justice asserts itself as ruling principle in social organization through the interaction of two closely related operating principles: the principle of the fundamental right of every individual to an unfettered search for truth and the principle of consultation on any and all problems. Acting in concert these are expressions of justice, because justice requires the individual participation of each to arrive at and execute just decisions for all.

The independent search for truth implies the right of each person to her or his own opinion based on that search.  But consultation is more than simply a blending of opinions.  Consultation is a cooperative approach to problem solving that activates the creative powers of individuals to find good solutions to their problems.   In full, frank, and open consultation, several lines of thought and opinion merge and combine to give a complete picture of any problem, because a comprehensive unit of thought, built up by the contributions of all participants, then surrounds the subject.  Where unity of thought is not present, the process of consultation, when undertaken within the framework of spiritual principle, can build or create it by seeing how the varied faces of individually expressed thought can be the different facets of a collective diamond of thought.  In this way, a common framework of thinking and a unity of purpose is created.  In consultation where dignity, tact, and knowledge are preserved, diverse views come into agreement on the nature of a problem, on a desired solution, and on the desired approach to its solution, for we think together when we speak together.   

True consultation generates perspectives unavailable to individual minds alone, and matures human thinking.  The Bahá’í writings aver: “Consultation bestoweth greater awareness and transmuteth conjecture into certitude. It is a shining light which, in a dark world, leadeth the way and guideth. For everything there is and will continue to be a station of perfection and maturity. The maturity of the gift of understanding is made manifest through consultation.” (The Compilation of Compilations vol. I, p. 93)  And: “Take ye counsel together in all matters, inasmuch as consultation is the lamp of guidance which leadeth the way, and is the bestower of understanding.” (Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh: 168)

Justice in good consultation means that there are never those who know and those who don’t know.  There is no class structure of decision-makers and those that are charged to carry out those decisions.  The principle of humanity’s oneness points to one inescapable truth: every individual is invited to participate in deliberations upon subjects that affect his or her welfare. 

In short, consultation brings out the cooperative side of human nature, yet does not sacrifice individual expression in the process.  Indeed it depends upon that expression if oneness and wholeness are to be manifest.  In true consultation disagreement is never frowned upon.  Discussion must be frank.  Yet each must respect the opinions of others, must never belittle another’s thought, and must maintain focus upon the ideas expressed and not fall into petty personality wrangles.  Indeed, the Bahá’í Writings see the value of divergent thinking coming to unity in such statements as "the shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions." (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: 87)

Applying spiritual principles within a consultative atmosphere guides people through a kind of indirect social conflict carried out in a free and unfettered search for truth while striving for the moral betterment of self and community.  The goal is never dissension and opposition, but, rather, personal and community spiritual transformation.  Though conflict is intrinsic to any transformational process, that conflict can be constructive if carried out under the guidance of spiritual principle.  Its first effects may be disequilibrating, but this is part of a larger process of renewal and reconstruction. 

At every level of human interaction and governance, consultation will grow in importance as its power to solve seemingly intractable problems, defuse explosive issues and harmonize contentious disputes is understood.  It will become the chief director of the actions of nations and the means to resolve their conflicts.  On every level, from nuclear family to the family of nations, justice demands universal participation within the environment of consultative search for the truth to meet common challenges through united action. 

For all these reasons, The Prosperity of Humankind states that: “…consultation is the operating expression of justice in human affairs. So vital is it to the success of collective endeavor that it must constitute a basic feature of a viable strategy of social and economic development. Indeed, the participation of those on whose commitment the success of such a strategy depends becomes effective only as consultation is made the organizing principle of every project. ‘No man can attain his true station,’ is Bahá’u’lláh's counsel, ‘except through his justice. No power can exist except through unity. No welfare and no well-being can be attained except through consultation.’" (The Prosperity of Humankind: Section III para: 6)

Besides the formal institutions composing the Bahá’í Administrative Order, a number of experiments in  social and economic development in literacy, health care, and education, are evolving on the local, national and international levels within the global Bahá’í community. Such projects represent the growing influence of Bahá’i community within the larger community. Yet these different initiatives also occur within what the House of Justice called "a single social organism, representative of the diversity of the human family, conducting its affairs through a system of commonly accepted consultative principles." (The Promise World Peace: 5)

The principles and structures regulating the interplay of authority, power and initiative, and enabling the principle of justice to operate, demonstrate a powerful way to dissipate the heat of potentially destructive conflict into safe and productive channels of warm collective growth.

I said that one way to perceive the development of the Bahá’i Administrative Order was to conceive it as passing through three stages, the first focusing primarily upon individual transformation, the second upon establishing the basic institutional infrastructure of that order, and the third on the diffusing of the spiritual influence of Revelation upon an ever-widening receptive population. Till now we have discussed, briefly, the “how” of individual spiritual transformation, and, in a bit more detail, the “what” of fundamental institutions of that order.

From now I will discuss the creation and dispersal of the means by which the spiritualization of large numbers of people may occur, always keeping in mind that while at certain levels of analysis individual, institutional, and community are recognizable stages of spiritual and social advance, the development of the Bahá’i Order is not a rocket that jettisons any stage when it is “done” with it, as if its fuel was spent.  Rather, the Order grows organically, so that previous stages are incorporated into newer ones in a process of unfoldment.  Each stage of growth is, in a sense, never finished.  It becomes a permanent aspect of the entire transformational process by being incorporated. Incorporating previous stages gives them new direction, puts them to new purposes, and provides them a renewed power to accelerate collective growth by bringing forth new capacities in their interaction, because a wider arena opens for participants in which to act “to translate that which hath been written into reality and action.” (Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh: 166)

Authority, Power, and Initiative

Social change means social conflict. The question is how to manage or direct it.  The last one hundred years has witnessed a growing number of consultative groups and civic agencies appearing in the world, from global United Nations organizations to local non-governmental organizations, that often work together to address shared problems and challenges across the spectrum of humanity.  These experiments in self-directed decision-making display similar models of conflict resolution.

The Bahá’í Order presents a similar, but not identical, model for managing the conflict present in every society.  One striking difference of the Bahá’í system is its separation of authority and power.  In a national Bahá’í community: “Authority is concentrated in the hands of the elected members of the National Assembly. Power and initiative are primarily vested in the entire body of the believers acting through their local representatives.” (Shoghi Effendi, Principles of Bahá’í Administration: 70)  In a smaller fractal, the same relation holds for a Local Assembly and the believers in its jurisdiction.  “The authority to direct the affairs of the Faith locally, nationally and internationally, is divinely conferred on elected institutions.  However, the power to accomplish the tasks of the community resides primarily in the mass of the believers.  The authority of the institutions is an irrevocable necessity for the progress of humanity; its exercise is an art to be mastered.  The power of action in the believers is unlocked at the level of individual initiative and surges at the level of collective action.” (The Universal House of Justice, The Institution of the Counsellors: 1)

The separation of the power to act from the authority, vested in institutions, to guide individual actions into coherent paths of collective development is crucial, for it leaves intact the right of every individual to take initiative, but that initiative is best realized if undertaken within a flexible, coordinated, and evolving plan of community growth.  The potential for a clash is there, of course, but divergent paths are brought into coherence by "the law of consultation" and the unifying power of universal participation.  Thus, the oneness of the law of consultation and the wholeness of universal participation are balanced. 

Because of the Bahá’i Community’s emphasis upon the axial principle of the oneness of humanity, the conception of power within human relations at every level has some unique features in the Bahá’i teachings.  In my view, the nature and exercise of power in the Bahá’i writings is not one of coercion—even for good ends—or domination; neither is it to compel people, by force, law, or reason, to conform to certain patterns of behavior, nor to tyrannically impose one’s will upon others.  The exercise of power is generally more “spiritual”: i.e. in service of mutual or collective advancement.

Power is those thoughts and acts that enable individuals to achieve collective harmony in their aims and purposes, and mutual empowerment in their actions.  The aim of empowerment is to become channels for the flow of the powers, such as the power of unity, of love, of service, of forgiveness, of assistance to others, residing in the human reality.  The goal is for each soul to be a servant, and for those in positions of authority to be servant-leaders.  Thus the most powerful are those that best empower others to release their own individual powers in service, reciprocity, and cooperation to achieve group harmony and collective goals. 

This conception of true power, as that which empowers others, was exemplified by the Person of Bahá’u’lláh Himself.  Though a Manifestation of God and, therefore, according to Bahá’i belief, endowed with all power, the One whose Will is sovereign over all, One in the station of “He doeth as He willeth”, Who’s command is “Be, and it is”, He, in a celebrated passage, declares: “I am the Sun of Wisdom and the Ocean of Knowledge. I cheer the faint and revive the dead. I am the guiding Light that illumineth the way. I am the royal Falcon on the arm of the Almighty. I unfold the drooping wings of every broken bird and start it on its flight.” (Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh: 169)    

The same ideal is captured in the very title, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (servant of Bahá), which His Son, Abbas, took upon inheriting the leadership of the Faith from His Father. When some misguided believers tried to ascribe a higher station for Him, He unequivocally asserted: “My name is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. My qualification is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. My reality is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. My praise is 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Thraldom to the Blessed Perfection is my glorious and refulgent diadem, and servitude to all the human race my perpetual religion... No name, no title, no mention, no commendation have I, nor will ever have, except 'Abdu'l-Bahá. This is my longing. This is my greatest yearning. This is my eternal life. This is my everlasting glory." (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 139)

It is in this light that we can understand guidance from both Shoghi Effendi and the Universal House of Justice reminding those serving on any institution of the Faith to “consider themselves as mere channels whereby God protects and guides His Faith”, (Letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, August 8, 1933, to a National Spiritual Assembly. Lights of Guidance: 35) because the divine institution is a “sacred entity whose powers they have the privilege to engage and canalize by coming together in harmony and acting according to divinely revealed principles.” (The Universal House of Justice, 1994 May 19, response to United States National Spiritual Assembly)

Service is true power.  This means that the institutions of the Bahá’i Administrative Order have not only regulatory powers and coordinating responsibilities, but also responsibilities to stimulate growth through counsel and service. “In such a community leadership is that expression of service by which the Spiritual Assembly invites and encourages the use of the manifold talents and abilities with which the community is endowed, and stimulates and guides the diverse elements of the community toward goals and strategies by which the effects of a coherent force for progress can be realized.” (The Universal House of Justice, 1994 May 19, response to United States National Spiritual Assembly)

At every level and in every context of interaction, the goal is fellowship and concord for a common end.  It is something of a modern day and universal restatement of a principle articulated by Jesus for the individual: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” (King James Bible. The Gospel of Luke 9:24)   The Bahá’i community seeks to be a community of souls serving each other for a common good articulated through consultation by all involved, guided by authorized institutions, and carried out in a spirit of unity by members of the community.

The interplay of authority, power and initiative leads to a discussion of practical justice.  That is the topic of next post.